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Lost

Having spent my life in a buzzing metropolis, driving through the Midwest states was a hypnotic and sobering experience. Anyone who has seen the breadbasket of America will know what I’m talking about. Fields. Billions of acres of crops covering the land in waves of undulating leaves; the tamed wilderness organized into rows, blocks, and circles, continuing on for hours and hours and days and days. That’s one of the strangest things about driving through the Midwest. The endless ocean of cornfields, birthed by man’s labors seem to go on without end, but with no signs of those who created it. A car here, a small house there, a windmill, a rotting barn; it’s as if some great civilization built it eons ago and then died out, leaving the living remains of their creations for you to drive past and wonder at. That’s how I found myself on the evening of the last day in July, driving my red sedan along a veritable tunnel of a road cut across the cornfields. No broad highway for me; rather, I had chosen a graveled detour which I had been promised led back to the interstate. The last few exhausting days had seen me driving non-stop across the country, but today, as the sun peaked in the sky and began its free fall back into the earth, the end of my trip drew near. Rest, relaxation, and who the fuck knows maybe even fun lay at my feet; the only thing separating me from my goal was a mile more of gravel road and a few insignificant minutes on the freeway.

Unfortunately, my car was having a little trouble navigating the tiny country road. The assholes at the gas station had promised a worn but perfectly passable route, but a few miles in it became increasingly evident that neither description fit this sorry excuse for a road. Still, the anxiety didn’t really sink in until the gravel path degenerated into a dusty path and then into mere ruts on the ground. As the weeds growing between the tire tracks began to hit the underside of my car, I briefly grappled with the idea of turning around and taking the more traditional, albeit longer, paved route. But soon, that bitch, stubbornness, got her way and I plowed on forwards against the rising weeds and deepening dark…

As the sun kissed its lower lip to the crust of the earth I stopped the car. My journey had come to an abrupt halt. The road, barely discernible among the vegetation and barely wide enough for the car, had ended. Stopped. Right in the middle of a field of corn. Apparently, this was the literal road to nowhere. I cursed the hicks back at the ‘Pump and Save’ who had given me these shit directions and considered my options. Option, actually. The only action now was to return down the path I had so painfully traveled and then take the long paved road all the way around. Holding my breath, I tried to stifle a headache and several curse words running through my brain. And that’s when I heard that sweet sound. “PRBPRBPRBPRUBBBBB” the unmistakable mating cry of a Harley tearing down a highway at full speed. Evidently the interstate was straight ahead and only a few hundred yards away. I felt some guilt for what I was planning, but stubborness’ sisters, adventure and lethargy, convinced me that mowing down several hundred feet of some farmer’s corn harvest was worth not spending hours more on the road…

I wasn’t sure if a sedan could hold up to such punishment, but my car handled it like a pro, crushing and pulverizing the green stalks as they bent away and under the bumper. A couple minutes and bam! I was through, back out into the dim evening light. I laughed and flipped the wipers to clean all the green shrapnel covering my windshield. I stopped mid-laugh. This was a road, but definitely not the highway. A two lane, paved, black road ran in a perfectly straight line off into the distances, disappearing into the evening light. I cursed the assholes at the gas station again and prepared to bash my way back to the dirt path. But turning around, the beautiful hole I punched through the field was gone…

A wall of corn, not row to row, but stalk to stalk stood in front of me, and I realized with a sinking heart that there was no way I could find the dirt path again in that solid block of green. Once again I weighed my options. Just two options now: left or right. I headed what I figured was due south and hoped this road linked up to the highway I so desperately strove. Miles and miles I traveled. No change in scenery. Miles and miles of cornfields, pressing in on the car, enveloping me in the gloom of early night. No other cars. No other sounds. No radio reception. I stopped a few times, at first listening for the signs of a busy highway, and later just listening for anything at all; anything beyond my own breathing. Nothing. Nothing but the crickets, gently chirping to each other across the ocean of waving stalks. More driving. The crickets faded away and only the occasional shrill whine of a cicada cried out into the night. . More driving. Low on Gas. More driving. The moon peers over the tufts of corn and lifts itself into the sky, transforming the land into monochrome; draining away color. More Driving. Very fucking low on gas. More driving. Nothing but corn corn corn fucking everywhere. More Driving. . A barn?…

A barn. Aglow from the light of the moon it appears like a ship in the sea, a dark but welcome shape rising above the monotonous and oppressive landscape. With a mixture of relief and apprehension I continue down the road. One turn, a short driveway, and I’m there; parking at the bottom of the sloping hill that leads up to its moonlight roof. It’s built in an old wooden style, high gabled with heavy oak doors. It looks old. Like, not just normal “oh look, it’s an old barn kids” old, but reaaalllyy old, like it hasn’t been looked upon, much less opened, in hundreds of years. Still, its presence offers hope and companionship, shelter and safety. Getting out of the car I walk up the path to the front doors. Interestingly, the grass all around the barn, a meadow extending about fifty yards, is clearly meticulously cut and groomed. Also, the path up to the barn has been worn smooth, like some large machine has routinely pounded up and down, polishing and flattening the path. Striding up to the door I knock. And knock again. I give it several minutes, but apparently no one is living inside. I open the doors and walk in. I was right…

The stench hit me first. Powerful, like a left hook right on the nose. Seedy and cloying and sour, it was like being dunked head first into a porta-potty. I retch, struggling to force fresh air down into my lungs. But as my eyes adjust, and the stench escapes into the cool night breeze, the horror begins. . The barn is full of corpses. Dead bodies lie on tables, hang from walls, and sit piled in great heaps into the corners. Green with rot, their open mouths are grinning; their decayed eyes staring emptily about the barn. The world starts to spin around, my knees buckle and my breath escapes once again. Hundreds of bodies. Some are still fresh; crumpled spread-eagled in the corners of the barn, huge red-ringed gashes covering their bodies, wounds that look like splashes of lipstick applied to their pale, naked forms. Older, rotten corpses, lain out flat onto slabs of stone and wooden tables and hung from the walls; cut open and divided in a grotesquely methodical pattern: Their heart placed carefully near the head, tongue cut out, various organs lying discarded and piled onto the floor below, and their intestines bunched up and knotted like a nightmarish bouquet of flowers. Further into the barn lay the bits and pieces, brown dried hunks of what used to be heads, arms and torsos. And crates. Giant wooden boxes piled neatly along the back wall of the barn, almost innocuous but horrible; dark stains seeping from under the lid and running down. . But nothing compares to what hangs from the ceiling…

A fraying rope stretches down from the rafters. Hanging from the rope, gently swinging in the night air over the bloody tables is bound a horrible absurdity of something that was once alive. It resembles a victim of some terrible holocaust, its skin shriveled tight against its chest and belly, the arms unnaturally long and thin, hog-tied behind its back. Its hands and feet are enormous, ending in gnarled fingers a foot long, a jagged yellow nail at the tip of each one. Its head. A burlap sack has been tied around its neck, completely covering the corpses’ features. A gash runs the length of its neck, the dried remains of some purple ichor running down from the wound and staining the bag over its head. . Swinging there… Dead in the moonlight…

I rise above the waves of fear and stumble out of the barn, slamming the door shut behind me. Outside the moon still rises, the wind still blows, and the crickets chirp, the horrors inside the barn having no effect on the simple sanctity of nature. Leave. Run. Drive. The only thoughts that permeate my numbed mind. I turn away from the wooden monstrosity before me and run to my car. But the car isn’t there… There is nothing around but cornfields. As I run around the barn, the rows of waving stalks dance before my eyes. Trapped. Trapped in an ocean on a ship of the dead. No. I cannot stay here. I break for the fields of corn, the terrors behind chasing me heedlessly into the unknown ahead. As I hit the edge of the cornstalks my courage fails me. I cannot go ahead and I cannot go back. I stand there, shrouded by the complete silence…

A light breeze tousles my hair as I stand motionless and forlorn. Gently, the field of corn sways in place as the wind picks up. Then the wind really begins to pick up. The corn stalks begin to march back and forth in what is quickly becoming a maelstrom. The wind whips my face and tears across my arms. It reaches down my throat, pulling my scream out and mixing it with the surrounding chaos. Rain! It’s suddenly raining, a torrent, a solid sheet of water falling from the heavens, knocking me off my feet, churning the solid ground into liquid. Lightning! Thunder! Arcs of electricity fly before my face, striking and torching the ground at my feet. I run back to the only shelter there is, all my fear forgotten in the struggle to survive this onslaught from above…

I have barricaded myself in the barn. I’m shrouded in perfect darkness except for the pulses of lightning that glint off the outlines of the dead. This is past fear. I’m petrified, crouching against the bolted oak doors, the rain hammering a machine gun fire behind me, trying to bash its way in. Behind me lies certain death, in front of me lay the dead. The pulsing lightning seems to animate them. They dance and shiver and grin and laugh. They have nothing to fear. They laugh at me and my fear, they laugh at my blood, they laugh at my heartbeat. To this cacophony of laughter I sit frozen, watching over those that cannot move, move.

Lightning bolts across the sky. Flash. Dark. . Flash. The wind has been blowing the corpse tied to the ceiling; it’s rocking back and forth in long arcs above my head. Dark. . Flash. It’s hands are swinging back and forth beneath it. Dark. I thought the hands were tied behind the back. . Flash. The rope is swinging back and forth. The monstrosity is gone. Dark. . Flash…

Suddenly I see it crouching on the floor, its bagged head hung low beneath its shoulders. The cadaver’s limbs flail about, sliding it across the bloody wooden planks. Towards me. In the flashes of light I see its sickening twitching movement as it sways back in forth, its head bobbing around with no control. I hear it.

Bubbling, murmuring, babbling. It sounds like a drowning man trying to talk. It howls and gurgles and sputters and screams. Unintelligible. No pattern, no sense. It twitches, screaming, across the floor as I lie frozen against the wall, watching its movement in the throbbing light. . Flash. Dark.

Out the door and across the churning mud. The rain throws me down into the muck again and again. A guttural snarl and it’s after me; on all fours it leaps and twitches and gurgles and screams as it chases me. Into the corn. Knocking aside the stalks I stagger into the pitch blackness. I run and run. Unseen things tear at me – is it the leaves or has the beast caught up? I run and run. I run and trip. I tripped on a root – or did it grab me by the ankles? I run and run and run oblivious to the darkness, to my fear, to my aching lungs. And then it catches me.

Long nails – no, talons – gangrenous and yellow, tear into my shoulder and hold me back. I stumble and fall. I’m going to die; I can feel its breath on my face again. I can taste the death on its hidden lips…

I Will Not Die! . With a yell I rise up and grab its sallow arm, tearing its claws out of my back with a sharp flash of pain and blood. The monstrosity gibbers and yelps. And I run. And I run. And I run. And I trip again.

Falling, falling down into darkness, skidding across mud and stones, almost drowning in the muck I tumble down and down. Then it all comes to a stop…

I look up from the bottom of a ditch and realize I’m out of the cornfield. I’m at the road. The rain has gone away. The wind has died. Best of all, my car is parked by the edge of the road. I waste no time in jumping in, locking the door, and starting the engine. Miraculously, I have half a tank of gas. With a yell I stomp the gas pedal, hoping to charge forward forever and ever out of the blackness and into the light of day. . But the mud churns beneath me. My tires spin helplessly then sink into the muck. Ahead of me, the cornstalks part, and the dead thing crawls out into the beam of my headlights. With growls and burbles it slowly slips through the mire in front of me, taking its time, savoring the web of dread it has trapped me in…

Last chance… I stomp the gas again and fly forward. The creature leaps. My windshield cracks. With a “Thunk” and a splash of purple blood, it collides against the car then goes flying across the road. “FUCK YOU!” I cry as I stomp the gas and steer towards its crumpled form. ten feet – five feet – three feet. It gets up. I miss. But as I go swerving by it doesn’t give chase. I can see it in the rearview mirror, struggling to stand up. I shift to reverse and rev the engine. . Then a shape appears above the cornstalks. Blotting out the moon; a shadow climbs out of the field and walks down to the road. The light of night shines off shoulders that stretch meters across; forty feet above the ground the outline of a head eclipses the stars. It bends down to the monstrosity sitting in a pool of vile blood. The shadow picks it up, caresses it. Then it turns towards me. A low moan fills the air, rattling the car and sending the cornstalks into another mad dance. With its free hand, the monstrous shadow reaches down to its waist then lifts something high into the air. Something big and sharp that reflects the light of the moon across the darkened fields…

I slam back into gear and fly forward. The moan continues, the steering wheel coming loose in my hands. The cornfield is in a mad frenzy, stalks bend and sway with so much force they uproot and toss into the air, covering the road in shadows and leaves. “Thud thud thud thud thud” ground shaking footsteps coming for me, coming closer. A shriek of metal and something cleaves the roof of my car in two; light spilling into the car like air into a wound. The sounds of twisting metal deafen me as the wheels began to lift off the ground…

And then it’s over. I drop back to the road and accelerate, the shadow’s footsteps fading away into its hellish moan. I tear down the road without abandon, the dark shape and its unearthly call fading behind me… I get it now.

The horrible, blubbering shape was merely a pet, a dog, a guardian of whatever nightmarish creature lives and works in the barn. IT is the true master of that slaughterhouse. Although it’s far behind now – that dark shadow – it looks enormous. It turns, a flash of silver bursting from its hand, as it disappears back into the swaying cornfields…

Pedal to the metal. 130 mph. The engine roaring, the tires squealing. I fly down the road, impervious to my surroundings, to the blood flowing down my back. Minutes pass like lifetimes. Trees and shadows loom like a thousand unnamable horrors down upon my head. Then, a light. More lights. A town. Not just a town, THE town, the fucking place I was trying to reach so long ago, earlier today in an earlier life. I stumble into a diner, the screaming of the waitress lulling me into dark unconsciousness…

Sleepwalking, the doctors say. Here take these pills, they say. A hundred doctors, maybe more, and they all agree that I’m a headcase. The cuts on my face and arms? Scratches from the sharp corn leaves. My shattered windshield? I drove into a ditch. They throw a rainbow of pills in my face to cut down on my dreams, to avoid panic attacks, to bury my sorrows in a field of manufactured happiness. I guess doctors know best? . . Still, there are some things they’ve never been able to explain. I had some tests done on the purple liquid spattering my car. Inconclusive, all of them; apparently it’s blood, but contains things that are not blood(?). There isn’t much to say about the straight, clean cut that runs the length of my roof either, nobody has been able to tell me what will cleave steel like butter. Then there are the four jagged wounds across my back that ooze, puss, and bleed, but refuse to heal…

I stay in the city now. The chalky smell of concrete, the sharp smell of steel, even the bitter aroma of living humans keeps me sane. My apartment has no plants in it. I eat meat and bread. The sight of a cob of corn, or even a kernel, makes me throw up, sometimes faint. For the most part, I can interact normally (except for the vomiting thing) and pretend like the last day in July never happened. . I feel perfectly safe in the daytime…

But each night when I sleep, I’m forced back… Back to the moonlit fields, where the cornstalks bend and sway with the howling wind… Back to the hall of corpses, where the hooded monstrosity shrieks and gibbers and twitches… Back to the haunting ground of the unseen butcher, whose long knives flash into the darkness.